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The present invention relates generally to financial transaction systems, and in particular, to an integrated full service consumer banking system and a system and method for opening a single account that allows customers to access a full range of global financial services using a variety of access points.
In recent years, financial institutions have become increasingly diversified. Banks, for example, now offer a wide variety of products and services not previously available. These new products and services fall into two broad categoriesxe2x80x94new technologies for interacting with the financial institution and new financial services or xe2x80x9cPRODUCTSxe2x80x9d offered by the financial institution.
Innovative technologies for interacting with banks include the now ubiquitous automatic teller machines and customer activated terminals (ATMs and CATs) and, more recently, screen phones, personal computers configured for banking, personal digital assistants, voice response systems, and smart cards. Technology in existence today allows bank customers to access their banks from any place at any time. Notwithstanding these technical advances few bank customers take advantage of the full range of access points.
Financial institutions have also begun to offer a broader range of traditional banking accounts as well as investment and financial services. The traditional marketing approach of banks has been to try to enroll customers in new accounts, typically checking or savings accounts. Then, when the bank offers additional financial products or services, the bank tries to cross sell new accounts to customers having existing accounts with the bank.
One barrier caused by traditional account opening and cross selling of new accounts is that the customer must repeatedly provide the bank with the same data. This is very inconvenient and inconvenience is a significant obstacle in marketing of financial services.
Financial service is very much an inertia business. Once a customer opens an account, he or she is unlikely to change that account because of the effort involved. Most people don""t shop for financial services. Instead, something in a customer""s life occurs to cause a customer to make a change or be open to a change. There are moments in life when inertia is overcome; either by moving, death, formation of a family, a customer gets so angry at something that the customer decides to make a change, or some other event occurs. Thus, at the moment a customer opens an account they are open to new components, but it is difficult to open a customer up again. For this reason, cross selling financial services is very difficult. Once a person has a set of accounts, then something""s got to happen in their life to cause them to open up another account.
To overcome these obstacles, the focus of the present invention is to build a relationship with the customer rather than opening stand alone accounts for the customer. Studies have shown that as a customer""s relationship with a bank broadens, the customer""s balances increase. The present inventors have found that one way to establish a long term relationship with a customer involves opening a single account in which the customer has access to a full range of services at once.
There have, of course, been attempts to provide linked account structures in the past. The Citicard account, introduced in 1976 and 1977, was the first account that allowed four or five accounts to be mechanically linked together. A simple transactional account, short term savings, day-to-day savings, and 90-day savings, checking and checking plus line of credit were all linked in the Citicard account. Over the next ten years, other banks copied this approach and began offering xe2x80x9clinked accounts,xe2x80x9d which are essentially transactional banking accounts with some saving components and perhaps a line of creditxe2x80x94a very traditional banking product.
Another significant development was the asset management accounts offered by certain brokerage firms. These accounts offered a plurality of securities components in a single account. The brokerage firms were not, however able to offer traditional banking services. One example is Merrill Lynch""s cash management account (CMA). Aspects of this account are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,346,442 to Musmanno; U.S. Pat. No. 4,376,978 to Musmanno; U.S. Pat. No. 4,597,046 to Musmanno et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,674,044 to Musmanno et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,774,663 to Musmanno et al. and U.S . Pat. No. 5,270,922 to Higgins. The account offered by Merrill Lynch was limited to securities transactions and did not include full banking products.
Similarly, when a customer opens a brokerage account, there is no need to open a separate account for trading equities or for trading fixed income.
The next development in the evolution of Citibank""s account was the so-called asset network account that included a full range of brokerage services and, in addition, full banking services. This form of account originally known as FOCUS has become known as the CitiGold Account. This account, like brokerage accounts, was intended for sophisticated investors. The central feature of the account was sweeping funds into a money market account on a daily basis. Such an account is not, however, suitable for a broad market account that includes unsophisticated investors. The CitiGold Account also did not include credit cards as a component of the account. The CitiGold was an elite account intended for sophisticated investors.
The CitiGold Account system introduced the idea of integration and consistent presentations across the entire range of customer access points, including ATM machines, automated voice response systems, phone operators, staff screens, home banking on a computer, home banking on a screen phone, etc. In other words, in every contact with the financial institution, the customer sees the same presentation of the account and the same capability to do the transactions.
Another step in the evolution of the Citibank account was the Citione account, introduced in the early 1990""s. This account permitted linking of transaction accounts, certain traditional banking accounts and bank saving accounts so the customer could access all these accounts. In some regions the CitiOne account included securities or loan services such as line of credit services.
With the Citione account, customer""s accounts could be linked together randomly so that the financial institution""s different products and services could be linked together and appear on a customer""s statement. This was done on an ad hoc basis depending on a customer""s desires. The basic features available in the United States were checking, day-to-day savings, and insured money market accounts, certificates of deposit (CDs) and credit cards.
The next step in the evolution was the Citibank Money Management Account (CMMA), introduced around January 1993. The CMMA allows customers to link separate accounts and to perform a wide variety of financial transactions including traditional banking activities, brokerage activities and loan activities. Again, individual customer accounts could be linked to form an ad hoc mixture of product features. The system categorized those features within categories such as xe2x80x9cyour money in the bank,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9csecurities,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cborrowing and loan,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9ccredit cardsxe2x80x9d and the like. Among other things, the CMMA allows banking customers the convenience of xe2x80x9cone-stopxe2x80x9d shopping. Efforts were also made to provide consistent presentation. For example, on the screen phone and in personal computing banking, the top menu was made to look like the same menu on an ATM machine. However, after the initial screen, the systems diverged.
Notwithstanding the opportunities offered by the Citione and CMMA accounts, there is still significant room for improvement. Specifically, the present inventors recognize that while some of the infrastructure is in place, the understanding and concept of a single account that includes all of these features has not yet been achieved. The accounts were still linked on an ad hoc basis and customers were required to open up individual accounts. This required effort in educating customers about these accounts and in selling these accounts.
As with technological advances in remote delivery products, these new accounts offer the possibility of realizing improved customer services and significant operating efficiencies and reduced cost. Again, however, the potential benefits to be obtained from using an integrated financial system such as the Citibank Money Management Account have not yet been fully realized.
There are several deficiencies in currently available financial systems that might contribute to the less than full realization of the benefits offered by new technologies and services. To begin with, existing systems are not as user friendly as they could be. Although customers are able to access the system in a variety of ways, doing so requires that the customer possess certain skills, e.g., computer literacy, or a degree of technical competence that not all potential customers possess. Thus, there is a need to simplify the system for accessing the variety of services.
In addition, customers are not always aware of the variety of services offered by a bank. While banks frequently advertise and promote such services in their branches and elsewhere, not all customers pay attention to or are receptive to such promotional activities. Perhaps more significantly, the promotional efforts do not necessarily reach the customer at the time that they are open to change.
Thus, there remains a need for an improved integrated system for providing financial services. More specifically, there remains a need for an improved system for accessing a financial institution and for setting up customer""s accounts within a financial institution.
The present invention provides an improved system for seamlessly accessing an integrated financial system. The single account of the present invention is a broad market account intended for a very wide range of people. The account provides full investment capability, full banking capability, bill payment capability, lending capabilityxe2x80x94basically everything a customer would financially need to do. The account can include provision for insurance and retirement accounts as well. The present invention is characterized by the integration of a variety of services and a system and method for making those services available to customers. In this way, all services are available to a customer at every access point in a consistent manner.
To improve acceptance of such an account, it is helpful to have a consistent interface across access points. The consistent interface simplifies maintenance, but is even more important from a customer point of view. As a bank offers more products, the bank must make it easier for customers to use the new and existing products. A consistent user interface promotes quick familiarity with new products and technologies.
In one preferred embodiment of the present invention, the broad categories of components to be included are investment services, transactional banking services (bank investments insured money rate accounts and certificates of deposits), securities (equities, derivatives, mutual funds), annuities, secured loans, unsecured loans, and credit cards. The account may also include insurance components including property, health and life insurance components. The account may further include retirement components including 401K components and IRA components all segregated on a tax basis.
Thus, the system of the present invention has three principal characteristics. First, the system permits customers to access a financial institution through a variety of ways, including automatic teller machines, screen phones, personal computer, voice phones and the like. Second, the system provides a consistent customer interface.
Another difference is that the single account of the present invention is more comprehensive than previous accounts, For example, the account of the present invention includes a credit card component, a brokerage component and the possibility of insurance and retirement components. All services of the bank are included within the single account of the present invention, not just a selection of services. In addition, the single account of the present invention can be offered globally wherever there is a bank branch.
The present invention also provides a system for opening the account at a single session that includes means for collecting data concerning customer""s financial and/or investment situation, means for performing a needs analysis based on the data collected, means for displaying account information, means for making recommendations based upon the needs assessment, means for inputting a customer""s component selection, means for adding account components to a single account to build a single account that provides all the services desired by the customer and best satisfies the customer""s needs, means for performing a credit check, means for determining a single fee based upon services provided, means for authorizing a customer""s use of remote access products including means for issuing a bank card and personal identification code; means for identifying missing data and means for prompting the user to enter data that has not been provided. The system also includes means for linking data fields in each component such that once a piece of data is collected, the data is provided to all appropriate data fields. In addition, the system is constructed such that the user can bypass a data field and provide the data later in the session.
An important aspect of the system of the present invention is that it permits data to flow up and down through the process so that once a salient piece of data is collected, the data is transmitted to every location where it is needed. In other words, all similar data fields are linked. This provides several advantages. First, the user (bank employee) never has to ask the customer for data that has previously been providedxe2x80x94even if some other user collected the data. Secondly, the system users have flexibility to collect data at an appropriate time in their presentation to the customer.
The system of the present invention also preferably includes a pending file storage means for storing salient data that has been collected, but is not immediately needed. In this way, if the data is needed during a subsequent visit by the customer to the bank, the data can be retrieved without asking the customer to provide data that she or he has already provided.
In addition, the system allows the customer to interact with a financial institution that provides a variety of services through many different means including automatic teller machines, screen phones, voice phones, personal computers, branch tellers etc. without having to learn a new system. In other words, the system always provides a consistent consumer interface. The ideal system is an account that manages all the customer""s money and allows the customer to perform all transactions around the clock and around the world. In this way, a customer may choose whether to visit a bank in person, call the phone, or use a computer, the services available are all the same without altering the customer""s experience. Every access point is just another window into the financial services accounts.
Because the system is fully integrated, it provides operating efficiencies and cost reduction. This, in turn permits the financial institution to pass cost savings along to the customer which, in turn, strengthens customer loyalty and promotes relationship building. In effect, the present invention promotes a cycle of increased efficiency and cost savings that benefits both the financial institution and the customer and tends to bind the customer to the financial institution more closely in a way that benefits both the customer and the financial institution.
From the financial institutions point of view, the system, by offering the customer advantages, promotes customer loyalty and relationship building. The present invention shifts away from cross selling and convincing customers to sign up for new accounts and instead provides the entire range of services in a single account so customers merely have to be convinced to use what they already have.
The one-step relationship opening system and process produces obvious efficiencies, but has even more significant advantages in terms of customer loyalty and reduction in customer attrition. From the customer""s point of view, upon opening of the single account, they have a comprehensive financial relationship with the bank, not just a single account with the bank. The customer immediately has access to a wide range of financial services that they can use very quickly.
The account of the present invention is intended for a broad range of customers. As such, one critical aspect of the present invention is the provision of fire walls to make certain that customers understand the difference between securities and FDIC insured money in the bank. It is also necessary to prevent unintended commingling of uninsured securities with federally insured deposits. Thus, the present invention provides a balance of a single account with careful fire walls between securities and insured deposits.
Thus, one aspect of the present invention is an integrated financial system that includes a single customer account that permits a customer to perform various financial transactions including at least banking transactions and brokerage transactions; a user interface means for allowing a customer to access the account from a plurality of different sources including at least an automatic teller machine, a phone and a personal teller transaction and means for presenting a consistent user interface substantially throughout each transaction regardless of the source used to access the account. The account is flexible enough to include a variety of other components such as a credit card component, a line of credit component, a secured credit component and a money market component.
Another aspect of the present invention is the provision of a method of opening a single integrated account for a customer in a single session that includes the steps of building a database containing a customer profile that includes demographic information and customer financial information such as credit information and financial goals; performing a needs analysis based on information collected; recommending an account based on the needs analysis and presenting information concerning the component of the selected account to the customer; displaying an image of a bank statement; updating the database to reflect a customer""s selection of at least one account component, displaying a second image of a representation of a bank statement which image is revised to reflect the customer""s selection and printing at least one enrollment form.
The present invention also provides a system for opening an account in one session in an integrated financial system of the type comprising a single account that includes at least a checking component, a savings component and a brokerage component. The system includes means for assembling a personal profile that includes means for collecting salient data; means for building a single customer account that includes means for building at least a checking component, a savings component and a brokerage component and means for allowing data collected at any step of the process to flow to all other points where the data is required so that data need not be entered more than once. Preferably, each component of the single account includes data fields and the system further comprises means for transferring data between the data fields and means for entering data fields in different components that are related such that data entered in one data field can be copied into other related data fields.
The system may also include means for generating multiple prompts for certain pieces of data such that the user may exercise personal judgment concerning the appropriate time to collect such data and pending file means for storing information that is collected, but not immediately needed. The system also preferably includes means for building various other account components including a credit card account component, a line of credit account component, a secured credit account component, a money market account component, an insurance account component and a retirement account component.
Finally, the system includes means for displaying a representation of a bank statement that is connected to the means for building a single account whereby as the account is built the representation of the bank statement is updated.